Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Takeaways from the 58th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women

"We
need to take big and bold leaps, not baby steps, forward for gender
equality""Women
are called cooks, men are called chefs, women are called seamstresses, men are
called designers. Same job, different pay"

—
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director, UN Women

The
fifty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 58) just
concluded at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York. This year it
focused on a theme very close to my heart—“Challenges and achievements in the
implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for women and girls.”
The aim for the session was to produce a document that’d outline a development
agenda where women’s rights, empowerment, and gender equality were pivotal. This
in turn would serve as a blueprint for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
which will replace the MDGs as the UN target in 2015.

Before
looking forward let’s look back. The goals are as follows:

These
8 goals include 21 targets with 60 indicators that member-states need to reach
in order to achieve UN standards for development. To me the member-state’s
quest to achieve the MDGs is like a non-athlete attempting a pentathlon without
training. Just as the almost criminally optimistic novice would collapse due to
exhaustion or die trying to achieve an impossible feat, nearly a decade and a
half after that deadline to tick off the MDGs their achievement seems to be a
mirage instead of the credible finish-line for UN members. This is so because
gender inequality persists. To me achieving gender parity is boot camp for achieving
the MDGs.

On
March 11, 2014, representatives of the various organs of the UN system dealing
with the post-2015 agenda—UN Women, UNDP, UNESCO, FAO, ILO, UN-Habitat, UNICEF,
UNFPA, UNAIDS, and theOHCHR—brought out
a Joint Statement on Accelerating Progress on the MDGs for Women and Girls
which flagged off CSW 58. It highlighted the fact that “several dimensions of
gender inequality, particularly some key structural barriers, were not covered
by the MDGs, including violence against women and girls, violations of sexual
and reproductive health and rights, the unequal division of unpaid care work,
the gender remuneration gap, unequal access to assets and productive resources,
women’s lack of participation in decision-making at all levels and the persistence
of discriminatory laws.”

The
joint statement made another crucial point that proves my boot-camp theory:

Gender equality is a means for
accelerating progress on all MDG targets, for example eradicating poverty,
reducing maternal, newborn and child mortality, reversing HIV and ending
hunger. At the same time, progress in achieving all the MDGs, for example
improved access to water and sanitation, and achieving full and productive
employment and decent work for all, promotes gender equality. The gains therefore
from investing in gender equality are substantial, both to women and girls
themselves, and to societies more broadly. The cost of not acting is also
immense.

Worrying Statistics, Exciting
Campaigns, Roadmaps

According
to the same joint statement:

ü31 million girls of primary school age and 34
million girls of lower secondary school age are not in school

ü17 million girls will never enrol in school due to
factors such as safety concerns and social, cultural and economic barriers.

üIn 2011, there were 774 million illiterate adults, a
decline of just 1% since 2000. The number is projected to fall only slightly,
to 743 million, by 2015. Almost two-thirds of illiterate adults are women.

In
a world where, according to the Netherland’s mission’s statistics, 39,000 girls
under 18 are married off every day, we need to refocus attention and funds on
keeping girls in school as it has a multiplier effect in protecting girls from
early marriage, controlling maternal and infant mortality as well as enabling
educated and empowered young women control the timing and number of children.

The
Invest in Girls campaign is a timely initiative from this point of view as it
is focussed on ensuring access to education for girls. Investing in teachers is
also central to the quest to educating the girl child. E.g., in nearly a third of countries, less
than 75% of primary school teachers are trained according to national standards
and the challenge of training existing teachers is worse than that of
recruiting and training new teachers.

Another
point emphasized in the conference was the fact that gender equality is not a
women’s issue but an issue for us all. The He for She campaign of UN Women launched
on March 8, International Women’s Day reached 19 million users of social media within
a week and focussed on getting influential men doing their bit to bridge the
gender gap.

The
gender indicators—52 standard indicators for gender equality, together with the
9 standard indicators for measuring violence against women—approved by the UN
Statistical Commission in February 2013 would serve as a guide for data
compilation internationally and help formulate the roadmap to gender equity.

Information
and Communication Technology (ICT) and the internet were hailed as catalysts for
advancing women’s rights and empowerment. In a “smart and wise knowledge
society for all” where women and girls have access to and are able to use ICTs
achieving the MDGs is a certainty. Beacons of hope discussed at the conference
include Empowerwomen.org, an ICT tool to drive the women’s agenda in the
economic sphere that’s helped over 40,000 women and men around the world. Another
revolutionary ICT programme is “She Will Connect” a partnership with Intel for
digital literacy training for young women in countries in Africa.

The
commission culminated by calling for women’s access to opportunities and
resources and a post-2015 agenda where the safety, human rights and empowerment
of women are critical. The unified call was for an enabling environment for
gender equality where economic, social and environmental policies promote
substantive equality for women and girls supported by gender-responsive
institutions across all sectors. A wonderful ideal to focus on in the quest for
a better world! As they say when you aim for the stars even if you miss you’ll
hit the moon!